Hockey a family affair for Blue Jackets Foligno, Jones

Seth Jones was nervous Friday night as he prepared for a hockey game.
And he wasn't even playing in it.
The Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman spent the team's off night glued to his television screen, where he watched his brother, Caleb, make his NHL debut with the Edmonton Oilers.
"I was sitting there the whole time watching it," Jones said. "(I told him), 'Don't be nervous, it's just another hockey game.' But it's impossible. I remember my game still. You have butterflies and the jitters. It's a pretty exciting feeling."

With that, Jones joined a fraternity of brotherly love in the NHL. Sibling duos exist in all sports, but perhaps because hockey is such a small world, the sport seems to have more than its fair share of family connections.
From the Sutter family, which sent six brothers to the NHL in the 1970s and '80s, to the modern-day Staal dynasty to the Gretzkys - likely to forever be the highest-scoring duo of NHL brothers, with Wayne totaling 2,857 points and Brent adding four - hockey lore is famous for its highly successful families.
The Blue Jackets now have two players on the squad with brothers currently playing in the NHL. Jones joined Nick Foligno, who has played in the NHL since 2007 and welcomed his brother Marcus to the league four years later. Marcus now plays for the Minnesota Wild after six seasons with the Buffalo Sabres.
"I don't think you realize how hard it is to get here at this level until you start talking to other players," Nick Foligno said. "To have another brother in the league as well … there's are quite a few of them, which is a cool testament to a lot of guys, but it's something I'm sure that's a really gratifying thing for their family.
"The sacrifices they made to get those guys there - you think about your own and all the things that my mom and dad had to do for us. Our sisters had to come to a bunch of games they didn't want to come to. It's nice to see it pay off."
Both the Folignos and Joneses share one particularly interesting detail in common - both had fathers who played professional sports. Mike Foligno played 15 NHL seasons with four different teams, scoring 355 goals in 1,018 NHL games.
Popeye Jones, meanwhile, was an NBA player for 11 seasons, with the 6-foot-8 power forward playing in 535 games with six different teams. No matter the sport, having a family tie to professional athletes was helpful.
"We spent a lot of time in NBA locker rooms growing up, a lot of NBA games and practice days in there with those guys and (saw) how they prepare for games and how seriously they took their job and how much they wanted to do better," Seth Jones said. "We saw a lot behind the scenes that maybe other kids don't see every day, so it definitely helped."
The Jones brothers famously became interested in hockey when their father played for the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets shared a building with a Colorado Avalanche team in the midst of its dynastic run in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the Jones kids took up the sport from there.
For the Foligno brothers, their father was a window into the professional hockey world.
"The passion that I saw my dad have for the game, that's what stuck with Marcus and I," Nick said. "We love the game of hockey because of how much my dad loved the game of hockey. He never had to force it on it, I think we just saw him and how he interacted with the game and the people in it, and we wanted to be part of that."
Since the two Foligno brothers have debuted, they've played against one another a handful of times. It's an experience Seth Jones hopes to have as the Blue Jackets have games vs. Edmonton scheduled for March 2 and 21.
"Hopefully he's still up," Jones said of Caleb. "Hopefully he plays well enough to stay up and earn a spot for the rest of the season. You never know. That would be a pretty awesome experience."
It's certainly one Foligno can relate to.
"It's always fun, but as you get older, you realize how short a career can be and how hard it is to win, and it makes it harder to battle against him," he said. "You want to see your brother do well. Don't get me wrong, when we're on the ice, I'm focused on doing my job for my team, but it makes it weird when you battle against each other."
Still, "We cherish being able to play against each other," he said. "It's a lot of fun. I don't think we realize it as much in the moment, and I'm sure we'll reflect on it later on. And it would be pretty neat, I've always said, to play with him at some point in our careers. Who knows what lies ahead?"
The Blue Jackets' family ties to hockey don't end there. Riley Nash's brother, Brendon, played two NHL games with Montreal in 2010-11 early in what has become a long pro career. Cam Atkinson's brother, Tom, played at Boston College like the CBJ sniper, while Boone Jenner's brother, Leo, spent five years in the OHL and Ryan Murray's brother, Troy, spent four seasons in the WHL.
Family ties even go all the way up to coach John Tortorella, whose brother, Jim, played college hockey with him at Maine and currently is an assistant coach at Harvard.
Then there's the Sherwood brothers out of New Albany. The former AAA Blue Jackets standouts have both reached the professional level, with Kiefer making his NHL debut this year with Anaheim and Kole in his first pro season with Cleveland of the AHL, the CBJ's top minor league team.
"It brings us closer," Kiefer said before he played his first NHL game at Nationwide Arena on Saturday. "We talk about hockey almost every day - what we can do to improve, how we can go about it, our mind-set and all that. It's kind of cool that we're experiencing our first year of pro together. We definitely had our battles growing up too, so we're close in age where we're still competitive. Hopefully I can be a good role model for him."
Seth Jones, Nick Foligno, and Kiefer Sherwood all have one other thing in common as well - each of them is the older brother. As such, with a little benefit of added perspective, each is keenly aware of the effort their younger siblings had to put in to make it.
"To see (Marcus) reach his dream is the most gratifying thing as an older brother," Nick Foligno said. "I'm sure Jonesy felt the same way, and no matter what team he's playing for, you're always proud of him."